


Phoenix

by orphan_account



Series: Fullmetal Fortnight 2014 [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Automail, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Prompt Fic, Xing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1290307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lan Fan winters in Xing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> Written for FMA Week 2014 (which I've renamed to Fullmetal Fortnight because of Added Alliterative Appeal and also because it's two weeks instead of _a_ week). Prompt 1-A: "Damaged".
> 
> Also, this is a day late because I'm trash and I actually lay on the floor for about two hours yesterday reflecting on Lan Fan. Damn me.
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. Enjoy, and thank you for reading!

By the time the dawn had begun to colour in the eastern skyscape with dull rose and duller gold, the pain in her left shoulder had settled to a pulsating throb that beat in time with her heart. Lan Fan turned her head away from the window. Lying in the darkness with the straw mat cool on her back, her skin bare but for the sarashi and bindings, she could feel the deep-seated agony more acutely with each movement. Every motion, every twinge of her nerves, every sensation on her arm or shoulder blade would send a fresh bolt of pain from the partially cut-open stump down through her spinal cord and radiating outwards to her trembling limbs.

But she could neither arch her back nor curl her legs inwards, unless she intended to black out from the ensuing torment. At least by now the world of agony had _become_ hers, a consistent baseline by which she could measure whether she had pushed herself adequately far that day.

The fresh bandages glistened in the steadily increasing light. She lifted a hand to the linen: wet.

Six months, she’d said. She’d told the mechanic _five_ , to give her sufficient leeway in case she required a short break. Not of cowardly reasons such as the inability to withstand the agony, but of not dying.

If she died, she could not serve her Clan, could not bring needed change to Xing, could not realise the dreams fluttering just free of her outstretched hands.

( _Hand_.)

Another ripple of pain, harsh enough to snap her jaw shut and grit her teeth against one another; she’d already chipped part of a front tooth in a bite dramatic enough

No matter how much she ate, she could never quite rid her mouth of the bitter taste from the cracked leather—required whenever the mechanic worked on her flesh—that gagged the moans rising from her throat: She refused to hear the weakness inherent in her cries.

(Refused to let the _world_ hear the weakness inherent in her cries.)

From outside drifted noises of flames roaring and metal groaning. The mechanic, a thick-muscled woman of the northern plains who spoke in a dialect Lan Fan could barely reconcile with her own of the southern mountains, had risen with the sun to continue smithing the automail—black as the _yin_ on her mask—that would replace that which she had sacrificed. And grant her powers beyond.

Equivalent exchange meant nothing to her. She devised her own exchange.

(When her grandfather had brought her in, the Yao nobles had sneered: “ _How dare you return us damaged goods, when we could simply send another? They’re all equally loyal._ ”)

But she had followed her lord for the blueness of his blood but for the hope in his mind. He would bring peace to Xing, to her Clan, to her people.

( _“That girl,”_ the alkahetrist healer had said. _“I’ve never seen anyone look so defeated.”_ )

She was not damaged.

( _“That's what you saw?_ ” The mechanic had laughed. “ _No. There was fire in those eyes._ ”)

She was wintering. And when summer came and ash gave way to flame, she would watch the world burn for what it had done.


End file.
